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August 14, 2013

Doubt

I live a fairly structured life. I find that I need to if I'm going to keep my head above water with chores and other adult responsibilities. This week, my typical schedule is thrown off because I'm spending two, non-consecutive nights at my sister's house while her husband is out of town. So grocery shopping that should have happened Monday had to wait until Tuesday. And then M had to work late. And we had to go shopping before I could make dinner because there was no food in the house. So we went shopping on empty stomachs with M already in a foul mood from his day.

The grocery store provides its own special forms of torture when you are already in a bad mood: lousy music, beeping scooter carts, and screaming children. M and I tried not to be unpleasant to each other, but his bad mood wore off on me and I stopped trying quite so hard. At one point I said "Can you imagine doing this with a baby?" Cue screaming children one aisle over. "Maybe we shouldn't have kids afterall. Maybe we would just end up at each others' throats all the time and get divorced."

I hate having ample time to consider such thoughts. I'm pretty sure it doesn't do any good. Because who *doesn't* find parenting stressful? But I keep coming back to the idea that I'm being saved from myself by being infertile. Because I'm not cut out to be a working mom. I'm exhausted at the end of the day *now*, without a whole other human being relying on me.

In addition to these cheerful wanderings, I find myself increasingly more disillusioned about work. Not just my current job, but work in general. Were humans really put here on Earth to spend the majority of their day isolated from the people they love? My husband and I work in opposite directions. If a medical emergency happened to either of us, it would take the other one at least an hour to get there. I see my husband, bleary eyed and mumbling, for 15 minutes in the morning. I don't see him again until we are both home in the evening, 10 and a half hours later. And then we go to bed at 9:30. How could I possibly raise a child when I don't even see my husband for more than 5 hours at a time??

Am I seriously going to create some charming portfolio of pictures and stories that paint M and I as fantastic parents-to-be when in reality I would be cramming my parenting skills into one or two hours in the morning and 3 or 4 hours at night? How does anyone anywhere ever do this???

You know what, its the drugs talking, I know it is. Because normal, not drugged me does not sit in her office and strongly consider proposing subsistence farming in the backyard to her husband simply so she can work along side him. But honestly, there are some days when I think the Amish have gotten it right.